Captured!
by Neil Riebe
Summary: More Hammer Horror excitment! Van Helsing travels to Styria-you know, Styria, home of the Karnstein vampires-and meets up with a precocious lady ghost hunter.


_**Captured!**_

**© Neil Riebe **

**September 2008**

"You say your name is Saward," Dr. Van Helsing said. "Are you English?"

"No," said the young woman. Her first name was Marcella, Marcella Saward, daughter of the American industrialist Henry Saward. "My father's side of the family emigrated from Britain to the U.S. shortly before the Revolution. They settled in New Hampshire, where we Sawards have been ever since."

"So, you're a New Englander."

"Quite!"

Dr. Van Helsing was aboard a train en route for Graz, the capital of Styria. The young lady beside him reminded him of a Gibson girl, with her silky features and aristocratic poise. Her blue eyes looked into his with a steely intelligence.

"I'm sorry to be so inquisitive," said Van Helsing, "but I happened to notice you have a copy of _Metaphysical Medicine_ upon your lap. I trust you can read German?"

"French, too, if you want to know." She took the book from her lap and hugged it protectively to her breast.

Van Helsing sensed a kindred spirit. _Metaphysical Medicine_ was the foundation of Marcella's studies, and Van Helsing credited the book's author, Dr. Martin Hesselius as his mentor, albeit a posthumous one.

"If I may be so forward," Van Helsing said, "where are you heading?"

"I'm going to Baron Vordenburg's estate."

"You don't say!" Van Helsing nearly fell out of his seat. "So am I! This seems more like fate than coincidence that we two travelers happen to be on the same train heading for the same place. To such an exclusive place, I might add."

Marcella's cheeks turned a rosy color while her eyes glistened in dreamy agreement. She seemed just as caught up in the romantic notions of fate.

It was 1901, the first year of the new century, and Baron Vordenburg, Europe's foremost expert in the supernatural, was holding his annual convention at his estate. To receive an invitation to his convention was equivalent to being awarded a medal.

"You are so young," Van Helsing admonished. "What do your parents think of you being out here all by yourself?"

"My mother is probably wringing her hands as we speak," Marcella smirked. "Luckily, my father spoils me. He posted a letter to the Baron explaining my enthusiasm. The letter must have been a good one, because here I am!"

"Even so, you can't be a day over eighteen."

"I'm nineteen. Don't worry," the young woman squeezed the doctor's hand. "I find talk of ghosts exciting. I won't get the vapors or make a scene."

"My dear," Van Helsing said, arching his brow at her, "my colleagues don't congregate annually just so they can talk about a glowing ball of ectoplasm they saw in a dusty attic. They get together to share their experiences in their fight against the forces of darkness—forces such as demonic possession, Satanic cults, and the undead. Are you ready for such talk?"

Her eyes widened as she lowered her book to her lap. "They go into all that? Heavens! Now I really can't wait to get there."

Van Helsing laughed. He couldn't help but admire her untested courage.

#

Baron Vordenburg resided in an affluent quarter of Graz. His elegant home made one feel safe.

His colleagues didn't chill the air with horror stories as much as Van Helsing had suggested to Marcella back on the train. Wine, chamber music, and political gossip populated the words of their lips.

When they did exchange stories, Dr. Henry Armitage of America presented his latest translations from that ancient tome, the dreaded _Necronomicon_. Then Bishop Fabian of Great Britain showed off the scars on his hands and face from the slash wounds he sustained while exorcising the Scarber House in Devon County. Even more fantastic anecdotes followed. Van Helsing, as a rule, didn't engage in one-upmanship. He shared his modest achievements and made no mention of vanquishing Count Dracula, or even the Count's vampire protégé, the Baron Meinster.

To his surprise he bumped into the portly Dr. Tobler.

"I thought you said you didn't subscribe to... what was it you called it?" Van Helsing said in challenge, "troglodyte superstition?"

Tobler chuckled. He was a jovial man, becoming serious only when he collected his fee. "I know how this looks, Van Helsing. But you have to admit you metaphysical types are increasing in demand."

A servant interrupted them with hors d'oeuvres. Dr. Tobler shocked the man when he took the whole tray and swallowed a couple of dainty morsels before he realized the tray was too big to be intended for one guest. Tobler chuckled again, and set the tray on the dining table.

"Now where was I?" he said as he licked his fingertips. "Oh, yes, you wanted to know why I'm here. First, let me assure you I still consider myself a scientist. However, one has to be practical. Remaining in easy circumstances is not as easy as it used to be. The field of medicine is changing. There's Freud with his psychological theories. Then there's your lot with your ghost hunting. It's a matter of supply and demand. Patients are demanding to be cured of these intangible ailments. I am here to broaden my horizons."

"Broadening your horizons is commendable," Van Helsing said.

"That doesn't mean I necessarily believe in the supernatural," Tobler hooked his thumbs in his lapels.

"Faith is the first step you are going to have to take if you are going to be an effective metaphysical physician."

Tobler dismissed Van Helsing's advice with another chuckle. "I'll take that under advisement." Tobler then tottered off into the crowd.

Marcella Saward ended up gravitating toward Dr. Van Helsing. The doctor felt sorry for her. She was surrounded by strange men. Not a one was under the age of forty. To make anyone's acquaintance, she had to span a gulf of both age and gender.

"Are you finding this get together daunting?" he asked.

She grinned, trying to appear brave. Her hands rubbed her punch glass nervously.

When their host, Baron Vordenburg, made his entrance, he caused a stir of enthusiastic greeting among the guests.

"Ah!" the Baron declared when he found Marcella, "you must be Henry Saward's daughter." The Baron kissed her gloved hand. He was taken with her right away. Not that Van Helsing could blame him. Marcella's presence sweetened the gathering like pink frosting on old cake.

Marcella blushed, while the male attendees stared in envy at the attention she received from the respected Baron.

Vordenburg was lean, tall and stately, with a neatly trimmed beard and close-cropped gray hair. He also projected an air of confidence one found in men who were at the summit of their profession.

He tested Marcella's sincerity with questions. Her answers convinced the Baron her interest in the supernatural ran deep.

"Excellent!" He nodded in approval. "Since you are here to learn, allow me to show you my library. If the rest of you please excuse us," he said to his other guests. "Come along, Dr. Van Helsing."

Baron Vordenburg seemed to be under the impression Van Helsing was Marcella's guardian, which worked out fine. He enjoyed perusing the Baron's books.

Marcella ogled Vordenburg's collection with delight and wonder. The musky leather volumes filled the room with an aroma of knowledge.

"Choose any one you please," the Baron swept his hand across the shelves, "and it is yours."

The American girl had no idea where she should start. So the Baron chose one for her, pulling out a book about sprites. "I have little use for this volume," the Baron explained, "as my calling specializes in the undead. You, on the other hand, may find the subject charming."

Marcella accepted the book and thanked the good Baron.

Upon Vordenburg's insistence, Van Helsing and Marcella spent the night at his home. The following morning, Vordenburg gave them a tour of Graz. With his walking stick, he pointed out old shops, inns and boarding houses that were said to be haunted. In a church cemetery, he showed them a shallow depression winding between the headstones. "In 1714 a ghoul tunnel collapsed, leaving a trench five feet deep," Vordenburg said. "Two centuries of rain and mud has filled it in to what you see here." The last stop was at the outskirts of the city. There he told them about the legend of the White Wolf, the werewolf that stalked the woods up in the hills. "But only during a blizzard," the Baron said. "Hence the name 'White' Wolf."

At the end of the tour, Dr. Van Helsing retired to Vordenburg's drawing room. While he read the paper Marcella pored over the pictures she had taken with her Brownie hand held camera.

"I got nothing," she sighed in dismay. "After all the haunted places the Baron took us to, you'd think a ghost would show up in at least one of my photos."

"My young friend," Van Helsing said with his eyes on his paper, "the odds of capturing a specter on film are remote."

"Others have. One day I will, too. I just have to keep trying."

"As much as I admire American optimism," Van Helsing spoke as he turned the page, "it's not a tonic for every problem."

He sensed the young woman's frown boring into him. Lowering the paper, he smiled at her. "Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to prove me wrong."

#

Dr. Van Helsing rode the Semmering Railroad home. Marcella sat beside him, reading her new book. The ride through the mountains afforded stunning scenery. Van Helsing would've enjoyed the view more if the clickety-clack of the train hadn't lulled him to sleep.

Screams awoke him. The train wheels squealed against the rails. Before the slumbering doctor could get his senses together, a tremendous crash erupted outside. The car came to an abrupt halt, throwing the doctor forward. He rebounded off the forward seat and tumbled into the aisle with a jumble of other bodies.

"Doctor!" Marcella pulled him up. "Are you all right?"

Something smacked against a window. Passengers screamed and swept away from the site of a muzzle with flaring nostrils and hungry incisors gnawing the glass. Lightning fluttered, revealing outside a wolf-like head. The sides of the train car shook. Hooked nails poked through the car walls. In short order the walls had scores of dime-sized holes pierced into them. Van Helsing guessed there must be a whole pack of these creatures clawing up the side of the train car.

Grabbing his valise from the overhead rack, he rummaged through his stakes and holy water to get out his hammer. He ordered Marcella to leave her luggage and come with him. She managed to grab her bag as he pulled her by the wrist down the aisle.

Above, the beasts tore away the ventilation. One of them dropped to the floor, right in front of the fleeing doctor. The slavering thing crouched low to the ground. Its body was small and round with a wolf-like tail, and hooked claws. The legs had the same configuration as a wolf's but the femur, tibia, and ulna were hyper-extended. Four eyes glistened, like small opals. Two large ones with two smaller inner ones arranged as on the face of a spider.

"It's just as I thought!" Van Helsing exclaimed.

Before the beast lunged, he bashed its skull with the hammer, making it yip, and then dragged his young charge from the train. Outside, lightning flashed. People fled in every conceivable direction, dogged by those spidery wolves. One old woman lay squirming underneath one of the beasts. The thing had its jaws locked on her neck, its throat muscles flexing as it sucked the life juices out of her.

"This way!" Marcella pointed down a wooded slope. "We passed a village a moment before the train stopped."

Van Helsing looked one last time at the creature's victim before submitting to Marcella's tugging, smashing the heads of any monster that tried to jump them in the underbrush.

They arrived at the village with a dozen other stragglers from the train. The village turned out to be deserted. Its buildings abandoned in disrepair. Many of the roofs had rotted away. Doors and shutters lay upon the weedy ground.

"This is a fine state we're in!" bemoaned one man.

Van Helsing assumed the lead. "We rest for an hour. No more. Then we travel northeast. Gloggnitz can't be more than a day's march from here."

"I'll need more than an hour, mister," a bedraggled woman pleaded. "It'll take a whole night to get my poor heart to slow down."

"If any of those creatures caught our scent, they will track us. We must stay ahead of them."

A middle-aged gentleman came forward. "Since you seem to be in charge, you should have this." The man gave Van Helsing a compass.

"Thank you, sir. May I ask your name?"

"Conrad Bromberg."

"Very good. I'm Dr. Van Helsing." He shook Bromberg's hand. "Will you be so kind as to find comfortable places for these people to rest while my partner and I explore the château overlooking the village?"

"Maybe we all should go to the château?"

"The floors may be rickety. It'll be safer if only two went. Also, be sure to keep people well away from the chapel down the street, over there. We don't want any surprises creeping up on us from the cemetery."

"I catch your meaning, sir," Bromberg said.

Van Helsing turned to Marcella, who was clasping her hands together, trying to keep them from shaking. She looked worse for wear. Her long blond hair had come undone and her hat barely hung from its pin.

"You don't have to be ashamed of being afraid," he said.

"It's not that so much, Doctor. I'm just horrified by what those monsters did to the passengers. What attacked us back at the train?"

"Spider hounds. Vampires summon them to do their bidding. Do you remember the chapter in Hesselius's book about the Karnstein vampires?"

"Yes."

"I have a feeling we are in their village." Van Helsing surveyed the empty streets warily. Another fit of lightning burst overhead. Thunder rumbled. "Which is why I don't want to remain here more than an hour. Shall we go?"

Van Helsing took Marcella up to the crumbling gothic manor atop the slope and searched for swords, finding only one. "Decapitation is the most effective way to deal with a Karnstein vampire," Van Helsing said. They found no clues of who lived here. Much of the interior had collapsed. By then the rain was coming down in sheets, spilling through the holes in the building.

On the way out, Van Helsing stopped at the exit. The moldering village appeared that much more uninviting through a gray curtain of rain. Its streets were all mud and puddles.

A mist rose up from the chapel cemetery, and oozed out between the huts and shops.

"Fog shouldn't be acting like that, should it?" Marcella asked.

"No," Van Helsing said, becoming concerned.

"I didn't think so." Marcella sounded excited as she got out her Brownie and snapped pictures.

"Put that infernal thing away!" Van Helsing lost his temper. In his eyes, the girl was being frivolous. "I told you, you can't capture a ghost with a cheap camera."

The fog separated and each individual white wisp slinked through windows and doors. Shortly, shrill cries of agony and horror followed.

Van Helsing took the crucifix from his valise and the spare in his pocket. He gave the spare to Marcella. "You know how to use it?"

"Of course!"

Van Helsing sensed from her tone she understood what he meant. Warding off a vampire required more than waving a cross. One had to back up the warding with stubborn, unrelenting faith.

"Let's see who we can rescue," he said.

They descended halfway down the slope when a wisp of fog rose up to meet them. Holding out the crucifixes, they forced the fog to stop.

But a second bank enveloped them from behind. Van Helsing lost sight of Marcella. He called out to her. Raspy hisses filled his ears. He aimed the cross in a multitude of directions. He had no idea which way he should turn. Skeletal fingers raked his hand, disarming him of his crucifix. He didn't see them, but he felt their hard tips. He fought against his growing panic.

"Marcella!"

Only the whispering hisses answered. Bony hands groped him. He swung back, striking vapor. Nothing more. They could touch him, but he couldn't touch them.

At last he grabbed something soft and warm—Marcella's arm. He pulled her along as they ran up the slippery slope, and out of the fog. They ran into the woods, ran and climbed into the mountainous hinterland until their lungs could take no more, and even then they ran.

The fog followed, unrelenting, unfazed by distance or effort.

Dr. Van Helsing collapsed among the brambles and blacked out once he hit the ground.

The touch of a hand brought him to. Confused, he expected to be dead, a husk drained of life. But he was alive and well. Marcella, too.

A woman dressed in a black cloak hunched over him. Her hood masked her face in shadow.

"The mist!" Van Helsing clutched the woman's arm and looked around. The fog was nowhere in sight. "Where is it? Are we safe?"

The woman said nothing. She stood and beckoned them to follow with a wave of her hand.

Van Helsing helped Marcella to her feet. They were too fatigued to challenge their benefactor. Their need for a reassuring companion overtook their better judgment as they followed the cloaked woman to her hut in the woods.

The rain had stopped along the way. Rivulets drained from the silent woman's thatched roof.

"Please hang the crosses on the door before you come in." She motioned to a peg mounted in the door. Her voice spoke in kind, sweet notes. Van Helsing and Marcella accommodated her.

Inside, the hut had a cot, several cupboards, and a stone fire place. No chairs, but she had mats set on the dirt floor by the fire. The flickering light and long shadows in the impoverished confines created a grim sort of coziness. Nonetheless, her puttering about in her food stores made the place seem homey.

"Vampires hide within the fog," the woman said. "Your cross on the door will protect us from their greedy kisses. Come! Sit by the fire. Warm yourselves while I prepare a meal."

His legs ached so. The doctor sighed when he settled down. As the fire dried him, his senses cleared. Marcella had fallen asleep, pillowing her head on her bag. Poor girl. She looked worn.

"Is she yours?" the female hermit asked as she stirred a piping soup over the fire.

"Mine?" Van Helsing asked. "In what way?"

"Daughter, niece…lover?"

"She is my traveling companion." Van Helsing studied the hermit. Her hand was slender, her nails too fine to be scratching out a living in the mountains. The hooded face kept staring at the sleeping girl. Her air of longing validated his suspicions.

"My name is Dr. Van Helsing," he said abruptly to draw the hermit's attention from Marcella. "What is yours?"

"Don't think such horrible thoughts about me," the woman pleaded.

He denied thinking ill of her. He only wanted to get acquainted. But she kept pleading. She ignored the words of his voice, and spoke to the words in his heart. My God, Van Helsing thought, she is reading my mind!

He reached for the sword.

Her hand touched his wrist. Instantly his limb became numb. He reached with his other arm, and she numbed that one, too. She lifted him and threw him upon the cot. His whole body felt turned to ice. Probing for the pulse of his carotid artery, she leaned close. Her face came into the light, gazing at him with lovely features and hungry eyes. Dark, lustrous hair spilled out from her hood. Van Hesling now realized who she was—the vampire Countess Carmilla Karnstein.

"I am not like the others," she said soothingly. "I am kind. Be happy for I will please you!" Then she bared her fangs.

Before she lunged, a hat pin pierced her neck. Black ooze spouted from the wound.

Carmilla spun around, hissing.

Marcella stood ready with the sword and swung. What she lacked in skill, she made up in ferocity. The cleaved head smacked the wall, left a black stain, and thudded on the floor.

"Oh no!" Marcella dropped the sword and covered her mouth. "I thought she was a vampire!"

The decapitated corpse was no longer that of a beautiful vampire, but of an old, emaciated woman. Instantly the air ripened with the smell of death.

Van Helsing got up, carefully. Pins and needles coursed through him. "A vampire's spirit took possession of this old woman's body. From the look of her, she has been dead for some time. We should go. The spirit will still be at large."

They fled the hut, and with the help of Conrad's compass trekked through the Styrian woodland to Gloggnitz where they boarded another train.

In Vienna, they parted ways, and Van Helsing didn't hear from Marcella until he received a packet from America, containing several photographs and a note clipped to them. He sorted through the photos first, and sat up when he saw snapshots of the fog. For within the white mists were skeletons. Tattered clothes hung from their bones and fangs protruded from their jaws. Marcella had provided the first images of a vampire's ghost. "Well done!" he said out loud.

He read the note and found one word, written with a proud hand and underlined by a single, defiant pen stroke. The note said: "Captured!"

The End


End file.
